BRIEF—Competition enforcement in pharma: Insights from the EC’s Update Report

12 February 2024

The European Commission (EC) has published a report providing an overview of the enforcement of European Union antitrust and merger rules by the EC and EU national competition authorities in the pharmaceutical sector between 2018 and 2022.

In this post, Vincenzo Volpe, as associate in law firm Ropes & Gray antitrust team, sets out his key takeaways from the report which include:

Competition enforcement in the pharmaceutical sector remains a high priority for the Commission and NCAs;
Transactions involving medicines that are innovative, treat rare diseases, and/or address an unmet medical need are likely to attract scrutiny;
A significant proportion of notified healthcare mergers are either blocked, subject to (structural) remedies or withdrawn;
The EC and NCAs will continue to enforce against a broad range of anticompetitive behaviors in the pharmaceutical sector.